Since we're in 3E 427, Skyrim, Hammerfell and High Rock are still experiencing the aftermath of the Bend'r-Mahk war, right? And with that, Jehenna and eastern Dragonstar are part of the Skyrim province? Jehanna is depicted in High Rock in the official maps, though. I know the 3rd PGE goes past the TESIII timeline but where it says "There are few days without an act of terror from one resistance group or another..." probably is applicable to TESIII's timeline as well. It sounds very similar to the fear and anger felt by the Redguard Insurgency in Karthwasten. Will there be a similar group of people? Perhaps a split city that is very segregated? That's how I would picture a city that was split down the middle between one province and another with races that hate each other. Kinda like how in TESV's Windhelm you have Dunmer in the slum corners on one side and the Nords on their side. I would expect to feel lots of prejudice and fear when going into Dragonstar during this time period (if I'm interpreting the lore correctly).

"If one is to understand the arcane arts, one must study all its aspects, not just the dogmatic narrow view of the Mages Guild."

I hope I don't come across as being a dick here, but PLEASE for the love of Talos, Tes96 - read the forums. Everything you've asked has been extensively discussed on both the old and new forums for years in threads like City Planning: Dragonstar.

Bump... well, we have made progress on Yeti's points all over the place, but I still think it would be nice to have some collated plan, which I'll post thoughts on below

I humbly suggest we have some discussion in this thread or another about what precisely is needed for the next release? As I know Yeti, you are working hard on the NPCing for the Karthwasten file. What should the rest of us be doing? Seems development has kind of bottlenecked recently. Not to suggest of course that Yeti should be giving us all instructions -- we need to decide as a group what we can work on next.

1. Release Karthwasten (complete remaining interiors, add all NPcs, finish writing dialogue).
Well, this is Yeti's rather excellent contribution, apart from the remaining interiors, which need reviewing by us in the reviewing department. If you have a list Yeti of which ones are outstanding let us know, otherwise I will make an effort to organise with the others to go through outstanding claims on the old forum and have them all reviewed. Edit: I think there is one cave claim for the tunnel network still out with RyanS.

2. Finalize a development map for The Reach that follows a cell grid and includes roads, settlements (with final names) and dungeons.
Muspila has made an excellent cell map of the entire reach which should be sufficient here, if we want to add labels for dungeons and towns, I suppose we can do that also.
Which exterior claims need putting up next? As I think berry is finished or finishing with his grasslands claim, if he wants to take another, it might be good to decide which ones are available!

3. Begin serious work on our next major settlement - currently slated as Dragonstar.
Seems development has moved on Markarth rather than Dragonstar as next city. Are we going to interiorise Markarth before Dragonstar? We are still waiting on assets for Markarth but there's no delay (other than our collective available time) in working on Dragonstar when somebody wants to take that job on. Alternately there are smaller Nord villages around the Reach still to do

4. Review the Skyrim Exterior file and plan alterations (where to add roads, what settlements to alter, and anything else to make our game world seamless, logical and consistent).
Well, Muspila and berry have done some excellent work here already. I don't know what people deem further necessary of alteration. I'll leave this to others.

5. Begin work on quests.
Yes please! I see there are a few quest claims up already. I wouldn't mind taking on some quest claims myself to be honest, but I don't know the status of whether more are coming for Karthgad + area and the process we are going to use for quest claims.

<roerich> woah it's hot in here
<Lord Berandas> it must be Summer.
<Infragris> #hell is meant as a spam and off topic channel. Doing a great job already

Luxray wrote:1. Release Karthwasten (complete remaining interiors, add all NPcs, finish writing dialogue).
Well, this is Yeti's rather excellent contribution, apart from the remaining interiors, which need reviewing by us in the reviewing department. If you have a list Yeti of which ones are outstanding let us know, otherwise I will make an effort to organise with the others to go through outstanding claims on the old forum and have them all reviewed. Edit: I think there is one cave claim for the tunnel network still out with RyanS.

Luxray wrote:3. Begin serious work on our next major settlement - currently slated as Dragonstar.
Seems development has moved on Markarth rather than Dragonstar as next city. Are we going to interiorise Markarth before Dragonstar? We are still waiting on assets for Markarth but there's no delay (other than our collective available time) in working on Dragonstar when somebody wants to take that job on. Alternately there are smaller Nord villages around the Reach still to do

We should start work again on planning Dragonstar soon. I might try my hand at an updated dev map in the next few weeks. Without an interior set for Markarth, Dragonstar and Old H'roldan are the only significant settlements we can move forward with at this time.

Luxray wrote:5. Begin work on quests.
Yes please! I see there are a few quest claims up already. I wouldn't mind taking on some quest claims myself to be honest, but I don't know the status of whether more are coming for Karthgad + area and the process we are going to use for quest claims.

Questers would work on quests in an esp file that uses the Main file as a dependent. Right now, we can't work on quests for Karthgad until I've finished re-adding the NPCs. Also, Karthgad will ideally have more quests.

Regarding exterior work, I thought I could start working on Markarth/Snowhawk - Dragonstar road, together with cliffs surrounding it, if everyone is fine with that. I should be able to complete it in similar rate of work, as I still have lots of time to spare; then, with opening the claim for Dragonstar itself, we would have whole that massive valley taken care of.

I made plan showing that potential claim some days ago, just prior to realising it shows nothing more than that old and utter plan by Worsas (I think?) Not to mention similar maps posted by Roerich and Yeti on private boards. So nothing revealing here, but oh well. "Direnni bridge" line represents potential localization of mesa-joining bridge I talked about some weeks ago in my claim thread, though by no means I say it's obligatory for us to make it. Cliffs are fine as they are.

The problem I see with that claim is that at least for the time being, it would require claimer to cut out cells from 3 different esps - Skyrim_Exterior, Skyrim_Main_v01 and -109, 11 & -109, 10 from my claim. It would preserve the confusion regarding our exteriors and make merger work particularly harder, I fear.

One more point: I think we should ultimately drop the concept of the new road, leading through Vorndgad forest and the cliffs, represented by the green line on Worsas's road plan. I think it would look too artificial here; the idea of major towns being connected by the ring-shaped road network, with impassable wilderness inside that ring, sounds more appealing to me, personally. And I imagine the Bear Clan earns too much Drakes from road fees paid by merchants forced to travel through Karthgard to even consider maintaining another road in the region.

Finally - are we sure that's the best spot for Dragonstar? I would rather see it closer to the border, in more Hammerfell-ish countryside, not on the green hills of the Reach. Won't it be too similar to Karthwasten if placed here? That crossroads South-West from Dragonstar on Roerich's map seem to be more fitting spot to me; it's bottom left corner of my plan, as seen up there. We could move that tier V Redguard settlement in Dragonstar's place then.

Did we really agree on having more exteriors to the west of Scamp's Mesa? I dislike the idea. This is all basically Hammerfell iirc.

Not sure what you mean by Dragonstar being "too similar to Karthwasten". Maybe you mean "too close"? In that case, just take a look at the distance between Sadrith Mora and Tel Aruhn. Seemed very far to me ingame, yet it's just a couple of cells, and a lot less than we have planned between Karthwasten and Dragonstar.

In case you do work on the rest of the valley, I suggest you make them one file ultimately. That would make organization and merging easier in the end. To be honest, I don't have a clear overview of which files are the latest ones anymore. Not been looking at the main exterior since Lestat gave me the files...

Honestly, I think we need some kind of exterior work done that way. You can see that area if you look over the edge of Scamp's Mesa, and it would look odd if it's nothing but bare landmass. It isn't currently like the Velothi Mountains where the insurmountable border creates the illusion that there isn't a artificial barrier.

But that's just my view on things. Obviously, that side of the mesa would be the last priority when it comes to getting work done on The Reach.

The three places that probably should be worked on next is: 1. Northern half of the Druadach Highlands, 2. Dragonstar and 3. all needed changes in the npced areas (Vorndgad Forest, Grassland between Vorndgad Forest and Markarth & Wilderness around Karthwasten).

Next we need an updated main file by Yeti, including the new Karthgad, Vorndgad Forest and Karthwasten, to which we will be adding your finished claim, so you can load it as secondary file for your claim.

For all changes within the npced areas in the main file, the main file will need to get locked to a single member that will perform all changes or additions. For the review of Karthgad and the surroundings, the file will be locked to Scamp and afterwards to the modder doing all the adjustments to vorndgad forest and other included places. This should happen as early and quickly as possible, when the npcing has been done. I wonder, if we should take care of that first, before dragonstar and northern druadach highlands are tackled, because it is a particularly critical thing that decides about a timely release.

Honestly, I think we need some kind of exterior work done that way. You can see that area if you look over the edge of Scamp's Mesa, and it would look odd if it's nothing but bare landmass. It isn't currently like the Velothi Mountains where the insurmountable border creates the illusion that there isn't a artificial barrier.

But won't we just shift the problem further west? To me it seems unrealistic to create a perfectly closed border without making it look very constructed and intentional, due to the flatness of the space behind the mesa. Furthermore it would require us to do a more serious hammerfell development, if we don't just want to cut it out of its own province without doing anything meaningful with it. In any case, the Dragontail Mountains is a thing that is partly already overwritten by our border mesas and probably needs to be taken into account:http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/ ... estmap.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One more point: I think we should ultimately drop the concept of the new road, leading through Vorndgad forest and the cliffs, represented by the green line on Worsas's road plan. I think it would look too artificial here;

Fine with me. Makes work on Vorndgad Forest easier.

Finally - are we sure that's the best spot for Dragonstar? I would rather see it closer to the border, in more Hammerfell-ish countryside, not on the green hills of the Reach. Won't it be too similar to Karthwasten if placed here?

Scamp suggested to move Dragonstar slightly northwest, so it can be better fitted into cells rather than be stretched onto the neighboring border mesas. Dragonstar being surrounded by Reach landscape isn't a problem, I think. I'm not sure how the layout should be, though. It shouldn't cover 4 entire cells, to begin with, unless it is a very loose city layout with much empty space in between.

It seems very tough to imagine Dragonstar successfully kept by Hammerfell, if it doesn't make use of that tight valley passage in some way. I think that it would make the name more justice to place the 'shadow gate' right within that narrow passage and have the hammerfell part of the city behind the mesas and the nord part in front of it.

Yeti wrote:Honestly, I think we need some kind of exterior work done that way. You can see that area if you look over the edge of Scamp's Mesa, and it would look odd if it's nothing but bare landmass. [...]

Quite the contrary, actually. The mesa at least provides some sort of "completed" border that doesn't just cut off at the end of a cell. If we fully detail cells to the west of it, we'll pass up the opportunity and have a jagged border that'll have much more of a difficulty to look like a seamless transition between our lands and what's beyond. You'll always have a view on undetailed cells beyond the edge in this area, because of the lack of mountains, as you clearly point out yourself. The difference between adding more cells to the west and simply leaving the mesa as the western border to Hammerfell is that you'll have to jump down (forming some sort of physical barrier, so to speak) when on top of the mesa, which is a convenient side-effect that your suggestion doesn't come with. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of working along a huge-ass mountainrange. That just means we'll have to make do with whatever we're provided with by the local landscape, and to me the mesas are our best option.
Again, just my two cents.

worsas wrote:
It seems very tough to imagine Dragonstar successfully kept by Hammerfell, if it doesn't make use of that tight valley passage in some way. I think that it would make the name more justice to place the 'shadow gate' right within that narrow passage and have the hammerfell part of the city behind the mesas and the nord part in front of it.

Yes, to me it takes a higher priority to have cells completely filled with city content than having the city in a location that makes more sense in a strategical sense. Not sure on that one either, actually. The narrow passage would help defend the city against attackers coming from Hammerfell, not the other way round. That is, unless you place Dragonstar at the other end of the canyon, which again would lead to the other issue I discussed above. Moving the city closer to the canyon would also mean moving it closer to the mesa-tops, which, strategically speaking, can only be a disadvantage.

As to your suggestion about having the city basically being stretched over the canyon, I'll go ahead and say that it'll be difficult doing solid level design with these buildings in a canyon. I would need to test this further to verify this claim, though.

Scamp wrote:Not sure what you mean by Dragonstar being "too similar to Karthwasten". (...)

I meant by that they both use the same tileset and are to be located in similiar scenery, with mostly the same flora and landscape textures. We should come up with an interesting layout for Dragonstar then not to bore the player. Locating Dragonstar at least partly on Hammerfell dirt would be helpful in diversifying the two towns, although obviously we can achieve that by different not-so-cheap means. I'm probably just overly worrying here.

If area behind the mesas is not to be included, then Roerich's map nails Dragonstar's position imho. I don't think the city would look good if stretched through the canyon to lay in both valleys. Southern canyon's mouth looks like a good place for Hammerfell border fort to me.

Yes, to me it takes a higher priority to have cells completely filled with city content than having the city in a location that makes more sense in a strategical sense. Not sure on that one either, actually. The narrow passage would help defend the city against attackers coming from Hammerfell, not the other way round. That is, unless you place Dragonstar at the other end of the canyon, which again would lead to the other issue I discussed above. Moving the city closer to the canyon would also mean moving it closer to the mesa-tops, which, strategically speaking, can only be a disadvantage.

As to your suggestion about having the city basically being stretched over the canyon, I'll go ahead and say that it'll be difficult doing solid level design with these buildings in a canyon. I would need to test this further to verify this claim, though.
Image

Right now with Dragonstar being completely within the province, it would be extremely easy to keep out the redguards by simply occupying that passage (that will have some kind of gate, anyway?). In the other case both parties ccould jump down to the enemy part of the city from the cliff tops, at least. But overall there does not seem to be a satisfactory solution with the way the border mesas have been constructed anyway.

One more point: I think we should ultimately drop the concept of the new road, leading through Vorndgad forest and the cliffs, represented by the green line on Worsas's road plan. I think it would look too artificial here;

There should be a road between Karthwasten and Dragonstar. Perhaps we could connect the settlements using roads on the big mesa? I think that would work best, since there are already unconnected sections of road up there.

For the border, I was imaginng we'd make some sort of rocky landscape on the other side of the mesa that was impassable, but I don't mind either way.

Yeti wrote:There should be a road between Karthwasten and Dragonstar. Perhaps we could connect the settlements using roads on the big mesa? I think that would work best, since there are already unconnected sections of road up there.

Yeah, though definitely not as difficult as bulldozing a path through the Vorndgad Forest, at least. It would merely require rearranging some landscape on both ends of the mesa and connecting the existing roads on its top.

berry, 16.05.2015 wrote:2. There were two dungeons in the claim area, they are located roughly in the same place now; DoorMarker-shaped statics called "_interior" guide to them for your convienience. I turned one of this caves into goblin cave, I figured it's fitting here, with rough-looking countryside, rich road network nearby(which goes with higher chances for rich loot) and many groups of Orsimer around, that may have their own deals with their lesser cousins. I'm fine with (re)moving this cave though, if masterplanning says so. The other cave, placed not far from Dragonstar in secluded cliff side, could make cool Redguard resistance/highwaymen hideout, in my opinion.

3. I placed lots of exterior caves around the claim, they are pointed out by "_cave" statics that use NorthMarker arrow as a model. Most of them aren't anything special, though I located some points of interest here and there - there's an underground waterfall, abandoned lycanthrope lair, two wiped out resistance caves and a hideaway of Nordic spy (starring: Uncle Sweetshare ) Those are just my proposals though, I'm okay with repurposing the caves, feel free to shoot ideas or requests, I'd appreciate them. The caves should be Altmer PC-friendly, by the way, but I'll do some more testing along the way.

We decided to go with lots of niches, breaches and tunnels - the "exterior caves", how we got to call them - in this region setup, so it was easier to follow their numbers that way. Area planning benefits from this solution too.

Melchior Dahrk wrote:I am seriously having the hardest time finding a sub-forum I can post a topic in or a topic I can post a reply in here at S:HotN...

Perhaps we could use a general "Ask your questions here" topic, as seen on TR's boards? Melchior's not the first one wording out this issue.

berry, 16.05.2015 wrote:2. There were two dungeons in the claim area, they are located roughly in the same place now; DoorMarker-shaped statics called "_interior" guide to them for your convienience. I turned one of this caves into goblin cave, I figured it's fitting here, with rough-looking countryside, rich road network nearby(which goes with higher chances for rich loot) and many groups of Orsimer around, that may have their own deals with their lesser cousins. I'm fine with (re)moving this cave though, if masterplanning says so. The other cave, placed not far from Dragonstar in secluded cliff side, could make cool Redguard resistance/highwaymen hideout, in my opinion.

3. I placed lots of exterior caves around the claim, they are pointed out by "_cave" statics that use NorthMarker arrow as a model. Most of them aren't anything special, though I located some points of interest here and there - there's an underground waterfall, abandoned lycanthrope lair, two wiped out resistance caves and a hideaway of Nordic spy (starring: Uncle Sweetshare ) Those are just my proposals though, I'm okay with repurposing the caves, feel free to shoot ideas or requests, I'd appreciate them. The caves should be Altmer PC-friendly, by the way, but I'll do some more testing along the way.

We decided to go with lots of niches, breaches and tunnels - the "exterior caves", how we got to call them - in this region setup, so it was easier to follow their numbers that way. Area planning benefits from this solution too.

Neat. I thought that might be the case. The elegant thing about that is that they won't show up in game either so you don't necessarily have to remove them. Very clever. If I wasn't the only one working on exteriors in Lyithdonea - and therefore already know where all the nooks and crannies are - I would definitely have to steal that idea. I'll be keeping it in my back pocket though.

SGMonkey wrote:What is wrong with the general discussion forum?

Not sure about anyone else, but I can't seem to post topics here like I was going to. Is there a way to verify which sub-forums in L:AZ people can post topics into?